


Schrödinger's Rip

by Wallyallens



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Amnesia, F/M, Memory Loss, Post 2x09, RipFic, phil and sara, rip and sara, rip's amnesia fix-it fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-26
Updated: 2017-01-26
Packaged: 2018-09-20 03:30:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9473447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wallyallens/pseuds/Wallyallens
Summary: The state in which Rip is simultaneously Not-Rip, and Sara has to work through 'Phil' to save him. Or, How Rip Gets his Memories Back, with a time canary twist.





	

If questioned later, Sara would claim she did everything she could to get away. She would say that she fought, which was true, but that she did everything she could to get back to the Waverider, which was not. A part of her wasn’t even sure where the line was anymore. She had tried . . . but she hesitated, too. It was all very confusing and tiring and debating whether she really tried every way to escape wouldn’t change the fact that she _hadn’t_.

It had taken them four days to find the ‘Legion of Doom’ again. And then she had found Thawne, and her team were too far away to get there in time. Sara was hiding, and she could have stayed silent and they would have lost him again but – but – it had been four days, and the Legion still had Rip. Even if he wasn’t himself right now, he was still Rip somewhere, and he needed them. Really, there was no choice to make.

“Hey! Yeah, you. Speedy Gonzales – over here!”

Sara had been shouting and stepping into the light as soon as the memory of Rip being torn away by the speedster had crossed her mind. In her earpiece she could hear the team shouting, telling her to run, screaming that they were too far to get to her – and finding that she didn’t much care.

The team had each other. All of them, every single one, were stronger than they believed they were. They would be alright without her.

Rip had no one.

Sara remembered a yellow blur racing towards her, striking her as fast and hard as lightning, and the world got blurry after that.

There was a dull, throbbing ache in Sara’s head that wouldn’t go away. Wearily, the pain dragged her out of the blackness, urging her to surface from the safety of unconsciousness and into the screaming world, spiking with a wince as she opened her eyes. Concussions were a bitch. She blinked a few times, until the red spots dancing in her vision dissipated, before rolling her neck from side to side, the stiffness clear with each movement, but slowly making a picture of the room she was in.

It was dark in the corners, but a blinding blue light shone from overhead. She was handcuffed to a steel chair. And she wasn’t alone.

“Are you alright?”

‘Phil’ was similarly tied in the chair on her right. There were signs of distress about him – hollowed eyes, a red bloodstain on his shirt, a desperate, darting quality to his eyes – but he was still breathing, which was a relief. Right then, looked over at her, eyes squinting, before his lips managed to form words and he spluttered out.

“They bring you in here unconscious and bleeding from the head, and the first thing you do is ask about _me_?”

And God, he still had that awful American accent which didn’t quite fit right on his lips.

Sara bit down a sigh of disappointment. A tiny, selfish part of her had hoped that the Legion would have been able to bring Rip – her Rip, the real Rip – back. But that would mean they would be able to find the Spear of Destiny, or Holy Lance, or whatever; the truth was, compared to getting back their captain, none of that seemed important to her. It would later, she was sure, but as long as one of her team was MIA as Rip so surely was, looking at him and seeing a stranger looking back, Sara couldn’t seem to bring the big picture to feel so big. He was still just _gone_. There had been no miracle amid the bad news, no silver lining; no Rip Hunter, back with them.

Momentarily, she closed her eyes against the pain, trying to hide her disappointment. She had wanted Rip to be back. He’d know what to do.

“I’m fine,” she replied, the words thick on her tongue. Now that he had said it, she became aware of a warm sensation just above her right ear, blood trickling from a closing wound and dripping onto her shoulders. The coppery smell filled the air, and she could taste it when she spoke, refocusing on the man beside her. “Are you alright? Have they hurt you?”

Phil wasn’t half the liar that Rip was, and she wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. He flinched visibly as he looked away, body jerking involuntarily with the movement, handcuffs cutting into wrists already chaffed red and raw as he nodded once.

“They keep saying that they’re trying to bring your ‘Rip Hunter’ back,” Phil said in the quiet that followed. He turned his attention back to Sara, shaking his head slightly, “Why are they doing this to me? Whoever he was . . . I’m not him. I tried to be, you saw, but I’m just _not_. I think your friend is dead. He’s gone.”

“He’s not dead!” Sara didn’t intend to shout, it just happened, tearing out of her throat in a quick, desperate plea. “Rip is just missing. We’ll find a way to bring him back, but he’s not _dead_.”

“He is! I’m not him. I don’t even know if I want to be!”

Phil was getting more emotional with every word, voice rising with hysteria as his body shook. Sara was watching him closely. It was hard not to compare him to the man she had known: he looked better rested than the Rip who haunted the Waverider at all hours, and as if he had been eating regularly again. But there wasn’t the same spark in his eyes, the same steel, the same drive – Phil was a man without a purpose, a knight who had somehow forgotten his quest, and not having any monsters to fight did not become him. He looked lost without the villain at the end of the road waiting for him, adrift in a dangerous way.

“Phil? Phil, it’s okay. I’m going to get you out of here.”

Sara kept her voice low and soothing, maintaining eye contact until his eyes unclouded, looking back at her. She could wait for Rip to return all day, maybe even for lifetimes, but he might never show. That left her – and Phil. They were _doomed_.

Even as Sara looked around, stretching her fingertips and contemplating breaking a thumb to get out of one set of cuffs, she knew the odds weren’t in their favour. Even if she escaped this room, she had no idea where – or even when – they were. And against Merlyn, Darkh, and Thawne – she could fight one of them, maybe hold off two, but they didn’t stand much of a chance.

“You wanted him back, too.”

“What?” Sara asked. Glancing up from the cuffs, she found Phil watching her with sad eyes, jaw tightening when he realised she had heard his whispered comment.

“Rip. When you woke up, you had this look in your eyes, like there was hope – but then I spoke, and it went away. You were hoping he was back, just like they were.” He jerked his head to the room around them, meaning the Legion of Doom. There was a glassy look in his eyes as he sucked in a breath, and his voice was still so _wrong_. “You musta really loved him. To come here to save him.”

“I . . .” Sara felt her mouth close uselessly. Rip had been a lot of things to her. She hadn’t been in love with him, not how Phil thought – but they had time. All of it, in fact. A lot of things could have happened in infinity, and it was the stolen future which stung, and ached when she thought of her missing friend. Instead, Sara found herself laughing lowly. “Actually, I hated him sometimes. We’d argue like hell. Rip Hunter was one of the best people I knew – the bravest and kindest man I had ever met, perhaps – but he was also a stubborn ass. He’d argue ‘til he was blue in the face, if he thought he was right, but unfortunately for him I’d argue right back half of the time, because even he could get things wrong sometimes. We’d be at each other’s throats almost constantly.”

Phil looked surprised, blinking before his brows furrowed. “Oh.”

“Don’t think – that sounded wrong,” Sara expanded, waving a hand in the air. “I _loved_ Rip. He saved my life, and I’d have followed him right until the end, if he had let me. He made mistakes when he was hurting, but despite all that he is still one of the most fundamentally _good_ people on that ship. Even if he would disagree with me on that.”

“Why would he?”

“He never could see the light in himself . . . he’d say the same about me, probably. That’s why I need him back. But we did see who he was, eventually. There’s nobody on board our ship who wouldn’t trade places with him in a heartbeat, just like he did this for us in the first place.” Sara was looking at him by then, eyes burning, pleading. She needed to reach him, somehow. “We’ve got you, Rip. We always have.”

“I’m not . . . I’m not him.”

“You are,” Sara said simply, “You’ve just forgotten. But you’re in there, somewhere, and I’m going to save you, no matter how long it takes.”

A flash of irritation marred Phil’s face, breaking Sara out of her serene declaration. He shook his head, face souring as his lips pulled together in a pout, “I’m not him. I know you all think I am – but I’m not. I’m a film student! I’m not a hero or a time traveller or your lost boyfriend! I - I can’t be.”

“I know you’re not,” Sara said, trying not to sound bitter about that fact as she returned her attention to the cuffs. She didn’t want to be angry at Phil, to hate him for who he wasn’t – but while he was wearing Rip’s face and she needed him, it was hard. She missed Rip so presently it was like a bullet to the chest, making every breath more painful than the last. “Tell me what you know – when do they come here? Do you have any idea where we are?”

“I – I don’t know. It’s not like I have the sun to know what time of day it is – it’s just _this_ ,” he gestured with a bound hand to the room around them, exasperatedly, “all the time.”

“Great,” Sara said under her breath. She pushed out a measured breath and asked again. “You must have some idea what time they come. How long between each visit? When do they feed you?”

“I don’t know! I don’t know, okay? I just know they’re either here to hurt me or to let me use the bathroom, and I lost track of how many days I’ve been here, let alone what time it is!”

Sara really tried to hold her tongue. She failed. He was useless, and they were going to die in that room if he didn’t pull himself together. A tired sigh cracked her ribs, as she murmured to herself. “Rip would know what to do.”

At that, Phil laughed bitterly, the sound choking through his throat in a hurt way. “You’re just like them.”

“I’m _nothing_ like them. I came here to rescue you!”

“You came here to rescue _him_ ,” Phil spat back. “There’s a difference. I have my own life, you know. I was born in Oregon. My parents names are Mary and Paul Xavier. I was gonna be a director, I worked my ass off in school to get here. What if I don’t wanna go, huh? What if I decide that _I_ wanna live? _This_ me?”

Sara had to lean away from him. It was too intense, staring into those dark eyes, the edges of who he was lingering just below the surface. Of course his mother’s name was Mary Xavier – it always had been. The lines were blurring – if she could just make him see, the memories were right there, just waiting . . .

“This isn’t you. You _are_ him. This . . . your entire life, it’s not real! It’s a dream, Phil,” Sara said. Her heart broke a little bit for him, then. Not for what he’d lose as Phil, but for the losses he would feel all over again, when he got his memories back as Rip. Sadly, she swallowed down the emotion in her voice and shook her head. “It’s just a dream. It’s a dream he told himself, so that we could escape and be safe, and because . . . I don’t know, no one knows what you were thinking that day. Maybe you thought that scattering yourself would be permanent, that we’d never find you. Maybe you took away your own memories so that you could live a life free of all of this,” she looked around, at the empty room and the too bright light, and wondered for a moment if it was really a kind thing to do, to bring the old Rip back. But she had to. Sara forced herself to look at him. “Maybe it was a mercy; to forget. Because I won’t pretend that Rip’s life was perfect, or easy – it wasn’t.”

“They . . . they kept saying things, trying to make me remember,” Phil admitted quietly. “Names. Miranda and Jonas. Who were they?”

“Your wife and son.”

“I have a wife and son?” Phil asked, getting caught up in the moment. His eyes misted with tears as he leaned back in his restraint, hand twitching as if it wanted to touch his chin, face freezing in an almost hopeful look as a frozen grin stretched itself across his shaggily bearded face. It really was breaking her heart. “Jonas . . . that was my grandfather’s name. How old is – wait, NO. I don’t have a wife and son! I’m not Rip _bloody_ Hunter!”

Sara gasped out loud – for a second there, just a moment, Rip’s voice had come creeping through. It spilled out accidentally just long enough to say his own name, all British and ringing through the circular room, and Phil started with the realisation of the foreign curving of his lips as soon as he had said the words. He gave a little whimper, moving so quickly the chair gave a little start on its feet and wobbled. Sara felt a grin begin to grow on her face – but it slipped away quickly, realising what she had to tell him. It wasn’t a job or an experience she would wish on anybody.

“Rip? You have to listen to me-”

“No, stop it. I’m not him-”

“You are! You _have_ to remember them, Rip. Miranda and Jonas – you can still feel them, I know you can, here,” Sara tapped her chest, right above her thumping heart. There were tears in his eyes now as Phil strained and struggled at his bonds, vehemently shaking his head. “- and I know it hurts, it hurts so much you feel like you can’t _breathe_ , right? It hurts so bad you think the entire world must be pressing down on you. The pain is too big. Like it’s gonna swallow you whole-”

“Please,” Phil shook his head. “I don’t want to remember. It’s not good, there’s nothing good there. It hurts.”

“Feel that hurt, Rip. You have to; it’s a part of you. Our pain makes us human, feeling makes us who we are – they’re still a part of you, something you can never lose. You loved them. And you lost them. And you _raged_ , and _hurt_ , and you, Rip Hunter – you got _better_.” Sara was aware that her own eyes were burning now, blinking and sending a stream of water dripping down her cheeks. The tears landed on her lap, clearing her vision; Phil stopped fighting. He stared at her, eyes unfogging, a fire lit somewhere within them. He was scared, and sad, and he was coming back to her. “You told me I could get better, too. You _promised_ me, Rip. I believed in you!”

“Sara?”

Phil looked uncertain now, blinking slowly, hands twitching. As if looking out from a thick fog, his glassy eyes watched her as if she was a dream.

“Yeah, it’s me. I’m here,” she breathed hopefully, feeling yet more tears fall as she nodded, wishing she could reach out to him. “And I hope to God you don’t remember this when you get your memories back, because you’d never let _me_ forget it – but I need you, Rip Hunter.”

“What if it kills me?” he asked. His voice was barely even a whisper. “What if I can’t survive losing them again?”

“You _will_ survive, and you won’t be on your own this time. I’m here. You’re the best man I know and the only way we’re getting out of here is together, one way or another, because I’m _not_ leaving you again – but me and you, together? They wouldn’t stand a chance against us. So please, if you’re in there – remember. All the hurt, but the love, too. All the good times and bad times and times in between. Remember _me_ , Rip. Remember it all.” Sara closed her eyes, quietly begging, “Come back to me.”

There was a moment in the darkness where Sara allowed doubt to cross her mind. All she could hear was her own heartbeat and the man opposite her breathing with difficultly, and she thought for a panic-stricken second that her chance had failed, and Rip really was gone, and she had distressed the man in his place to the point of breaking for no reason. That wasn’t a world she cared to see again.

But heroes fought, no matter the odds; Sara Lance opened her eyes.

And Rip Hunter looked back at her.

“Sara?”

Although thick and confused, the accent was distinctly British, with just an air of annoyance, and Sara’s face cracked with a smile so wide she could have swallowed the sun. Rip was blinking heavily, as if waking from a long sleep, but he could _see_ her now in a way he couldn’t before – his dazed eyes took her in and recognised her for all that she was, and although they still were sharp with tears and his brow creased in pain, it was clear to her that it was _him_. The real him. Rip Hunter was back.

“You remember me?” she asked softly, wishing she could move the bolted down chair closer to him. Just being able to reach him would be enough. “You know me?”

“O-of course I do. You’re Sara Lance. You’re my second.”

“And the Waverider? The team? Who’s Gideon? What did we do on New Year's?”

She fired off the questions quicker for her mind to process, but Rip answered without hesitation. “The Waverider is my ship. The Team are probably causing trouble as we speak. Gideon is my oldest friend. And we somehow ended up at Rome’s last Saturnalia before it burned, Stein got captured by the Emperor as a fire-deity, and you made me dress up as a centurion to break him out.”

Sara could have wept, right then. She could have lain down and cried with relief and exhaustion for hours, knowing he was back. She wanted to slap him or kiss him or both. But for people trying to protect it, time was so rarely on their side, and the Legion of Doom chose that moment to emerge from the shadows as if they could bend the light itself.

“Very good,” Thawne said, a little smirk on his face. “It appears you were right, Merlyn.”

“These hero types are all the same,” Malcolm replied. The three of them were approaching in slow, ominous steps, apparently unconcerned about a thing in the world and sure of their victory. “We could have tortured Captain Hunter for years and got nothing out of him – but add just a little emotion . . . you played your part wonderfully, Sara. You always were weak in that way.”

Sara tried to spit at him, but Merlyn dodged with a twisted grin. She glanced over to Rip, whose eyes were on hers instantly, nodding his head slightly in acknowledgement that they would fight.

“We’re in trouble, then?” he asked.

“Of course we are. It’s _us_.”

“Must be a Thursday,” Rip commented dryly, sizing the three villains up. “The team?”

She smirked, echoing his words, “Causing trouble.”

“Back-up?”

“We have us. Who else do we need?” Sara replied with her signature grin, the one that always made Rip roll his eyes dramatically. True to form, he did just that. She was _so_ glad he was back. “Me and you, Rip, what can’t we do?”

“Fight three armed supervillains,” he deadpanned. Despite that, he nodded towards the white-haired figure approaching, “I take it you want Darkh? Or Merlyn?”

“Why not both? I’m feeling invincible.”

“I can’t believe you came without back-up.”

“To save your life – _you’re welcome_.”

“Well, you _needed me_ ,” Rip imitated her voice from earlier, and Sara growled a laugh as she popped her thumb loose, slipping the cuffs; she glanced over at him, finding the ghost of a smile tugging at Rip’s lips. “I suppose you didn’t really have a choice but to come, did you? Even if it was a really, really stupid thing to do.”

“I can just leave you here, you know.”

“You wouldn’t.” And yep, he was definitely smiling now. They stood together, shaking their bonds to stand shoulder-to-shoulder, facing the approaching Legion, and Sara’s whole body sang that this felt right. Nothing could possibly frighten her, not now Rip was back. He looked down at her, and Sara could have fought an entire army. “You ready?”

“You bet, Captain,” she replied. Sara grinned, “May I have this dance?”

“Certainly,” Rip joked along. There would be time for more later, but for now, they had each other’s backs, and they would fight. It was enough. “3 . . .”

“2 . . .”

“1 . . .”

“ _Go_.”

**Author's Note:**

> just a little drabble, because I haven't written in a while and I loved the new ep! comment? <3


End file.
